


brand new fingerboard with frets made of rib bones

by bingsha (youtiao)



Category: Given (Manga)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Character Study, Gen, See notes for warnings, Trans Male Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-23
Updated: 2019-10-23
Packaged: 2020-12-29 13:07:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21141020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youtiao/pseuds/bingsha
Summary: He smears his bloody fingers over the bout and laughs.You know why it’s so red?he asked Mafuyu.





	brand new fingerboard with frets made of rib bones

**Author's Note:**

> was originally written for a writer meme on twt, at the request of kayla: "give me trans yuuki content" 
> 
> WARNING FOR UNSAFE BINDING, BAD SELF IMAGERY, BLOOD, GOREY METAPHORS, AND INJURY. please proceed with caution and remember to bind safely

Yoshida Yuuki hates his voice.

In spite of this Yoshida Yuuki pursues music, where people use their voice the most, but he plays guitar and keeps his mouth shut. He’s good at that. He strums his fingers raw on a guitar that cost him in number five hundred thousand yen but in reality five hundred thousand yen and half his heart.

In guitar he puts his heart and his fourteen-years life-savings. In guitar he finds a vent. He closes his eyes so he does not have to see himself and all the failures that shape every single fucking line of his body, and when he howls to his bedroom ceiling the upstairs neighbour slaps the floor to tell him to shut the fuck up.

He tells his mother he’s trying out that ‘screamo’ genre. She frowns, and doesn’t say anything more.

He lets the blood run off his fingers in a shower so cold it feels like ice cubes are hammering his back. The shower tiles are pink. Bruises litter his ribs and back and chest but he can’t find it in himself to care. He stares at himself in the fogged up mirror, and tapes his fingers.

To be more precise, Yoshida Yuuki hates himself.

Why he pursues music, he’s forgotten so many years later. He grips his cherry red guitar because it is the only thing that can withstand the force of _him_. His tears polish its surface and his own heart sits inside the soundhole, plucked out of his miserable excuse for a body.

He smears his bloody fingers over the bout and laughs. _You know why it’s so red?_ he asked Mafuyu.

The sun rises in the east and sets in the west. Yoshida Yuuki fucking hates himself. He could write poetry. But he doesn’t, and he takes pen to paper in a desperate attempt to clear his mind of the clutter it fills itself up faster than he can burn and bury.

It’s an attempt. The aftermath of a wildfire looks like one thing, but as the sun claws its way off the horizon Yuuki somehow looks like knee deep ashes and skeletal remains of thousand-year old trees. But he’s a person, not a forest.

He hates his voice.

There had not been a ‘but’ before, but now there is, and he steps onto the fire escape and lets the wind comb it’s fingers through his hair. Freshly dyed and cut, with the assistance of his best friend and kitchen scissors and the old electrical razor his piece of shit dad left behind. Mostly the scissors and razor though. All Mafuyu did was sit and watch Yuuki attempt to see the back of his head.

He steps onto the fire escape and the wind whips away his tears as soon as they bubble out but like everything his faulty fucking body creates, they come faster than he can banish them to the Void (otherwise known as the cramped alley between two apartment buildings). His hands shake as he takes out the crumpled notebook paper that had bore the brunt of his anger all those nights ago.

He opens it.

He hates himself, because he’s sixteen and standing on a stage with lights so bright they burn his face, and he had smashed his mirror the night before because of the abomination he saw reflected in it. The crowd holds its breath. He does too, even though he’s more used to the feeling of being unable to breathe than breathing. His guitar hangs from his neck, and when he touches it it feels more alive than he does.

His chest is light. Maybe because he’s worn his binder less ever since he started putting bruises on cheap pens and notebook paper instead of on his ribs. Maybe because Mafuyu holds the other half of his heart safe now. He imagines he’d feel even lighter once his imaginations of a perfect body became _real_.

He grips the microphone. Maybe it’s time to take a step forward.

So he does.

**Author's Note:**

> hmu on [twitter](https://twitter.com/shuaidage)
> 
> peace out


End file.
